PROVIDENCE — A major end-of-session snag over an attempt by legislative leaders to squelch — or at least delay — tolls on the new Sakonnet River Bridge threw the General Assembly’s adjournment plans awry...

By Katherine Gregg, Phil Marcelo, Lynn Arditi

PROVIDENCE — A major end-of-session snag over an attempt by legislative leaders to squelch — or at least delay — tolls on the new Sakonnet River Bridge threw the General Assembly’s adjournment plans awry Tuesday, leaving scores of other contentious issues unsettled.

House leaders announced plans to return at 2 p.m. Wednesday, to try again to end the session that began in January, after a wild and angry debate over the tolls that led one lawmaker, Rep. Karen MacBeth, to say: “We were lied to about the bridges.”

A proposed 10-cent toll emerged as a compromise that could save the state from defaulting on earlier borrowings. After passing the House and Senate late Tuesday, the plan heads to Governor Chafee for his action. The move left East Bay lawmakers and residents fuming over what they saw as a broken promise.

“What they just did to the East Bay was wrong,” said Jeanne Smith, of Portsmouth, who came to the State House with a handful of other East Bay residents to protest the new proposal. “That’s a commuter bridge, but no one on this side of the bay cares.”

House Majority Leader Nicholas Mattiello said the General Assembly has no choice, at this point, and “a vote no is to pass the cost along to our children.”

But the debate grew heated with Rep. J. Patrick O’Neill saying: “Our collective word to the state of Rhode Island is no good anymore …We just voted to delay the tolls on the Sakonnet bridge … Today we are completely undoing that based upon essentially bad information or lack of information.”

“How can we lead?” he started to ask, when Mattiello declared is remarks out of order.

“Get to the merits of the bill. We all know the history,” said House Speaker Gordon D. Fox. “We don’t need you to repeat the history.”

“Thank you for the lecture. I appreciate that,” O’Neill responded. “I’ll rule you out of order, then you won’t get a chance to thank me for the lecture,” Fox replied.

“I don’t think you have the guts,” O’Neill said. “You’re out of order,” Fox snapped.

In the end, the “trailer” bill cleared the House on a series of lopsided votes. The final vote: 42-23. At close to 11:30 p.m., the Senate reconvened for its own discussion of the eleventh-hour compromise.

The House and Senate made some headway on other issues.

The House passed its version of a bill to increase the temporary disability insurance tax that every Rhode Island employee pays to extend TDI to people out of work taking care of newborns and sick relatives.

A Senate committee approved legislation to allow home-based childcare providers to unionize, and require the governor to negotiate reimbursement rates and benefits with them. The bill was still wending its way to the full Senate for a vote Tuesday night.

Legislators also passed and sent to Governor Chafee a controversial bill to create a “Choose Life” license plate, with half of the $40 surcharge going to an evangelical Christian organization that opposes abortion.

Meanwhile, lobbyists for the Rhode Island Payday Lending Reform Coalition conceded defeat after being offered what they termed “a fake compromise” by an unnamed senior aide to Speaker Fox after weeks of negotiations.

The coalition-backed legislation introduced in the House and Senate would have capped at 36 percent the interest on short-term “payday loans” that, in Rhode Island, can range as high as 260 percent over the course of a year.

“It’s clear that the more than $100,000 the Payday Loan industry spent to hire the former Speaker [William J. Murphy] and former Senate Finance Chair [Stephen Alves] was money well spent. Once again, insider deals and longstanding political relationships have trumped … common sense consumer protection,” said Margaux Morisseau, co-chairwoman of the Rhode Island Payday Lending Reform Coalition.

But the fate of scores more bills remained uncertain.

With legislative leaders huddled behind closed doors, pitbull lovers — and their dogs — packed one Senate hearing room to voice support for a ban on breed-specific legislation, while advocates on both sides of the abortion debate packed another.

Among the issues in play Tuesday night:

TDI benefits:

Legislation expanding temporary disability benefits to people out of work taking care of new babies and sick relatives cleared the House after nearly an hour of debate, in which lawmakers argued whether it would help or hurt business.

Rhode Island is one of just five states in the nation that has a TDI program. The others are California, Hawaii, New Jersey and New York.

If signed into law by the governor, this bill would effectively hike the state tax on wages that funds the TDI program, which now covers only those who suffer a non-work-related illness or injury.

Supporters argued that it would help companies retain the investment they’ve made in workers who would otherwise have to leave their jobs to care for a family member. But opponents noted the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups oppose the bill. They also warned of the potential for abuse.

“We’ve been in economic forums all session. Has this ever been one of the solutions that the business community has said they need? It isn’t, as well-intentioned as this is,” said Rep. Joy Hearn, D-Barrington.

“As it’s written, 50 people could take off work to care for a sick grandfather,” said House Minority Whip Joseph Trillo, R-Warwick. “It’s wide open for abuse.”

Rep. Edith Ajello, D-Providence, replied: “Wouldn’t that be wonderful? That would be 40 weeks. Each member of that family could actually take care of that senior citizen in perhaps their last years.”

But Rep. Jared Nunes, D-Coventry, said the legislation would disproportionately hurt the low income, who pay a larger share of their income to the TDI tax, which now is 1.2 percent on every worker’s first $61,400 in earnings.

He said the proposal would raise that yearly tax from about $732 a year to up to $854 a year for the average worker. “All we’re going to do it pass another $100 tax burden on those who can least afford it,” Nunes said.

Starting in January 2014, the bill would provide up to four weeks of paid leave for those caring for a newborn, newly adopted child or a sick relative. Economic Development:

The fate of a number of the economic development bills that House Speaker Gordon D. Fox and Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed unveiled earlier this year was uncertain late Tuesday night.

The two leading Democrats had competing visions for how the state’s economic development bureaucracy should be structured in the aftermath of the 38 Studios debacle.

Fox proposed a new Executive Office of Commerce, which would serve as the state’s main economic development arm and be headed by a new Secretary of Commerce, to be appointed by the governor.

But Governor Chafee has threatened to veto the plan.

Paiva Weed has also proposed recasting the existing Economic Development Corporation as the “Rhode Island Commerce Corporation” and imposing new requirements on the quasi-public agency, such as developing a mission statement.

Only a handful of economic development bills had moved by nightfall, including one that would require the state to develop — and revise every four years — a comprehensive economic development plan, and another that would establish a nine-member “Council of Economic Advisors” appointed by the governor to gather economic data and information.

At 9:30 p.m., however, House spokesman Larry Berman said: “We have an agreement with the Senate on a strong economic development package that is a compromise and includes the best ideas of our two packages.” He said details would be released later.

Dynamo House:

The Providence Redevelopment Agency would have the power to construct new buildings under legislation headed to Governor Chafee after a final House vote Tuesday.

Approval comes as the city considers plans to build a parking garage near the vacant South Street Power Station known as the Dynamo House.

But House Republicans, by far the minority in the 75-member chamber, objected to granting such authority to a single city agency without a specific plan in mind.

Said House Minority Leader Brian Newberry, R-North Smithfield: “No one has come to explain why this bill is necessary. No one has explained what exactly this bill is going to do.”

Brown University, the University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island College are working with the developer that owns the hulking power station to turn it into administrative offices for Brown and the nursing programs for RIC and URI.

Bridge tolls:

East Bay legislators fumed over the possibility that the legislature would impose a toll, after all, on the Sakonnet River Bridge that connects Aquidneck Island to Tiverton, to remove a threat to the multimillion-dollar financing of the state’s Turnpike and Bridge Authority.

The impasse stemmed from the legislature’s decision to bar tolls on the new Sakonnet bridge and toll increases on the Pell Bridge. Those measures were included in the new state budget the Assembly passed last week.

But after the budget cleared the General Assembly, Turnpike and Bridge Authority Chairman David Darlington said those prohibitions violate commitments the authority made when it borrowed money to support the Pell Bridge. The state promised it would be able to raise the tolls, if necessary, to maintain the bridge.

Darlington said the bondholders potentially could call in the bonds, forcing an expensive refinancing.

At 7 p.m., a potential compromise emerged on the House Finance Committee agenda that would impose a temporary 10-cent toll, starting on Aug. 19.

“A toll is a toll whether it is 10-cents, $1 or $10,” said an “extremely unhappy” Rep. John Edwards, D-Tiverton, calling it “grossly unfair” to impose any toll on the people of Aquidneck Island.

Mattiello, D-Cranston, rejected the notion that the new proposal represented a turnaround.

“It’s not a 180,” he told reporters. “This maintains the intent and spirit of the original [budget] article. The 10-cent toll is a reprieve from the original toll. ”

Under the proposal, the 10-cent toll would be in place until at least April 2014.

Before then, a study commission made up of Assembly leaders and state officials is expected to come up with a new plan to finance the long-term maintenance and repair of all the states bridges.